Tahir Yahya

Tahir Yahya (1916-1986) was Prime Minister of Iraq from 20 November 1963 to 6 September 1965, succeeding Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and preceding Arif Abd ar-Razzaq, and from 10 July 1967 to 17 July 1968, succeeding Abdul Rahman Arif and preceding Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif.

Biography
Tahir Yahya was born in 1916 in Tikrit, Ottoman Empire. He graduated from the Iraqi Military Academy in Baghdad and served in the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948 before supporting the 1958 coup that overthrew the Kingdom of Iraq. In 1963, Yahya took part in the coup against Abd al-Karim Qasim and was appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Iraqi Army before becoming Prime Minister for almost two years. In July 1964, he nationalized Iraqi banks in the Arab Socialist Union's implementation of socialism in the country, and he also worked to resolve the Kurdish question. In 1965, he resigned as Prime Minister due to his objections to Abdul Salam Arif's rule, and in 1967 he was appointed Prime Minister under Abdul Rahman Arif. He warned Arif about plans by the Iraqi Ba'ath Party to overthrow him, but his warnings were ignored, leading to Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein overthrowing the government. After years of torture and neglect, Yahya was released from prison into house arrest in 1971, and he died in house arrest in Baghdad in 1986.